


The Assassin's Assassin

by CupOfTeaSir



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Agender Character, Agender Kozume Kenma, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Gore, Demi girl Shibayama, Gang Violence, Gun Violence, Multi, Nekoma, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-15 06:24:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4596267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CupOfTeaSir/pseuds/CupOfTeaSir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenma’s life is threatened one day while in the middle of executing a hit, but this isn’t just one errant assassin wrestling for the same target. As it turns out, Kenma has been marked by every other assassin clan in Tokyo and he has no idea what he did to warrant it. Suddenly the hunter has turned into the hunted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. // sequence break

* * *

Kenma tucks the collar of his black trench coat up further to hide his face. In the grey laden streets, pudding hair like his would stand out. That is the exact opposite of what he wants.

He readjusts his bag on his back, trying to reach around with one hand and bring it closer to his body, and hunches forward as he walks, jostled by others in the crowd. His sharp eyes are trained on the man’s back while he tries not to lose him in the monsoon of people.

A mantra of _‘don’t lose sight of him’_ plays like a broken record in his mind.

The man’s business suit is black and pristine. Expensive. The leather briefcase he clutches in his hand is just as expensive.

That morning he had kissed his wife twice; once when he made his way out of the door to go to work, and again out of thanks when his wife stopped him at the end of his driveway when he forgot his phone and she rushed out to give it to him. Kenma knows this because he was there. He had watched it all happen. In fact, he knows almost every detail about this man.

He has two kids, aged seven and nine. His mother had recently been put in a retirement home while his father had died of stomach cancer two years ago. His anniversary is in three months and four days and he had just filed his taxes last week.

His name is Yoshifumi Takemitsu.

Kenma knows all this because he had spent the past week hacking into Yoshifumi’s life, slipping in undetected and sucking information out like a leech, gutting his computer of everything and leaving without a trace.

Kenma owns Yoshifumi Takemitsu inside out, and he has no clue.

He turns down a street to his left, making his way to the bus station. Kenma follows about six meters behind. Six meters is the golden rule. Any closer and you’d be noticed, any farther and you’d lose sight.

Yoshifumi turns down another street, the bus stop just a block away.

Following him there would just put him in a pocket. Dead ends are never good. He watches Yoshifumi’s back disappear from sight and then tucks himself down a small industrial side street, takes his phone out and calls for a cab. With the traffic he would arrive at the train station approximately eight minutes before Yoshifumi.

Kenma’s phone beeps with a notification telling him Yoshifumi has just made a purchase at an outlet cafe near the bus stop; a large coffee with one shot of espresso: what he gets everyday.

Three days ago he had tapped into Yoshifumi’s phone by setting up a fake Wi-Fi hotspot—Kenma’s own phone acting as a server—to trick Yoshifumi’s phone into connecting to it. Really all the connection did was tether his phone to Yoshifumi’s, allowing Kenma to watch every tap Yoshifumi made on his phone from his own screen.

Yoshifumi Takemitsu makes all of his purchases and does all of his banking online and from his phone so Kenma is able to read every single transaction he makes like a grocery list. Kenma had programmed his own phone to give him a notification virtually any time Yoshifumi showed any activity on his phone.

~

Kenma checks his watch. Yoshifumi’s bus arrives at the stop in one minute and twenty-nine seconds. The bus ride to the train station takes twenty-seven minutes. Kenma will arrive at the train station in nineteen minutes.

After a quiet cab ride he pays the driver, thanks him in his quiet tenor voice and shuts the door. The car speeds away and he is left on the sidewalk in front of the station.  

He waits three minutes by busying himself with a game on his phone.

Now, burying your attention in your phone is normal. Looking at people is the suspicious thing to do.

Satisfied that enough time has gone by, he walks across the street and into the seven story apartment building, making his way into the elevator. Heavy black shoes and clicking heels make him bristle. He knows they are coming his way. Two people step into the elevator with him, a man and a woman. They are both taller than him.

He doesn’t generally like being in such close proximity to others in such an enclosed space. It makes him feel claustrophobic. He pushes the button marked two, deciding to take the effort to climb the stairs over having to endure the feeling of their presences like walls closing in on him.

The elevator stops and he brushes past the two before making his way straight down the hall, opening the door to the stairwell. Climbing stairs is exhausting yes, but he can breathe easier this way. He doesn’t feel so naked and transparent.

After making his way up five flights of stairs he discovers that the door at the top needs a key. Kenma reaches into one of the inner pockets of his trench coat and pulls out an expired gift card to some bookstore. It takes a few tries but he finally shoves the edge of the card in hard enough, jamming it between the frame and the latch. After that all he has to do is wiggle the card and paw at the handle. When it softly clicks open he pockets the gift card once more. Then he is outside once again.

The wind is harsher up here, louder and whipping his hair around his face. He tucks as much of it behind his ears as he can.

The heavy metal door behind him shuts with a heavy clang. He knows already, but he checks the handle just to make sure. Usually these roof doors lock only from the inside so any maintenance worker stuck outside won’t be stranded there should something happen to their keys.

The handle turns without any qualms.

Kenma leaves the door alone and moves closer to the edge.

The roof is rather empty with nothing but a line of five vents jutting out. Usually there are more appliances scattered around, so this apartment must be quite old.

At the lip of the building he can see the train station as well as the rest of the block. The people look like ants—no, from a vantage like this they look more like tiny moving toys more than anything.

Kenma shrugs his backpack off his shoulder and undoes the zipper to reveal his equipment. Piece by piece he starts to assemble his gun. First the stocks are attached to the body, then the quad rails, and the barrel and muzzle following suit. After a few clicks and tightening of bolts his ten-inch Valkyrie sniper rifle is sprawled out on his lap.

He checks his watch once more. He has approximately three minutes left. Finally he sets up the bipod also in his backpack and fastens the gun on to it so that it can stand upright on its own. He positions the rifle so the nose hangs about five centimeters over the lip of the roof. With expert hands Kenma adjusts the trajectory, hugging the gun close to his torso and tweaking minute angles.

Someone once told Kenma that a sniper rifle was like weaponized physics. There is a lot involved in the process before the part where you pulled the trigger. It isn’t as easy as putting a person’s head between the crosshairs. No—that is the last step.

The amount of math that goes into shooting a sniper rifle is both excessive and completely necessary. You have to take into account distance, gravity, trajectory, wind direction and speed, time, and line of sight among many other things.

Everything becomes harder when you have a moving target buried within a sea of people.

If you miss and hit someone else you are a murderer, but if you hit your target you complete the job and receive a paycheck of a rather healthy sum of money. The line is thin and the juxtaposition is daunting.

The wind picks up and Kenma sighs, doing the math to adjust the gun accordingly. Though the day is clear with no clouds covering the baby blue sky, the wind just makes everything more difficult. It is erratic today and has changed direction at least six times since eight o’clock this morning.

Today is not the best day to shoot someone with a sniper rifle.

On top of that, at the altitude he is at, the conditions are much harsher as no buildings provide cover like they do for the people on the ground. He has to add that to the equation too: how much wind cover would the trajectory of the bullet go through and how it would affect its speed and direction. He pans the gun on the bipod once again, moving it two millimeters to the left.

If he had the choice he wouldn’t do this today, but HQ wouldn’t budge on the date, time or location. Yoshifumi Takemitsu needs to die. Today.

Another check of his watch tells him that there is about a minute left until Yoshifumi’s bus arrives at the bus terminal next to the train station.

He waits, distracting himself with a game on his phone, until a familiar head comes off the bus at the station down below.

Yoshifumi stops to type something into his phone.

Kenma’s phone goes off again the second the man below lowers his phone. This time the notification is a text sent to his wife telling her that he had made it to the station and he is boarding his train in a few minutes. Seconds later she texts him back with a ‘Thank you’ and an ‘I love you’.

This is a habit of theirs. Yoshifumi Takemitsu has a lot of those: habits.

In fact, most of his life is a routine.

And this makes Kenma’s job easy.

Because making a routine out of yourself is very dangerous.

Non-impulse murderers look for habits in their victims and use them to their advantage. To an assassin like Kenma, it’s like handing over a checklist.

Down below, Yoshifumi stops at a vending machine right outside the train station, the one he buys a canned coffee from every morning, having finished his first one.

Today it is the place where he is going to die.

Knee to the ground and shoulders hunched forward, Kenma hugs himself around the sniper rifle. Yoshifumi slots in his change and presses the button and Kenma places his eye to the scope.

Then he puts Yoshifumi Takemitsu in-between the crosshairs. He holds his breath, and then squeezes the trigger.

The gun kicks back against his shoulder. There was a time that he would have lost control of it and the butt of the gun would give him bruises in the crook of his shoulder at the end of a job. Now he is used to it. Has to be used to it.

Across the street Yoshifumi’s body falls limp to the ground at the foot of the vending machine. The blood and glass scatters around him.

There is a hole in his skull.

Kenma ducks down behind the lip of the roof, tucking himself in as small as he can get, simultaneously clicking the release on the bi-pod and cradling the gun out of sight and in his lap.

His heart gallops in his chest as he leans his head back against the lip of the roof. He closes his eyes and listens to the chaos erupt in the streets.

The screaming of a woman is always the first sound, just a simple, shrill shriek. More would join in, and then other shouts from deeper voices. Someone always calls out to call an ambulance.

Calling for help is useless because Yoshifumi Takemitsu is already dead.

_This_ is Kenma’s job.

~

He waits and is sure that the people gathered to help are looking around to see where the shot had come from. They’d look around, never up. No one ever looks up. Besides, Kenma had already taken trajectory into consideration. The bullet would be so buried in Yoshifumi’s skull that there was no telling which angle it entered from.

It is a murder after all. Assassin or not, he could still be tried in court if they ever were to convict him.

If they ever were to catch him.

~

After the job is done it is standard to wait at least eight minutes. Eight minutes is the average time, but assassins are to exercise precaution when judging the appropriate time to leave the crime scene. You have to give yourself enough time because if you leave instantly then you look suspicious. But you aren’t supposed to give enough time for the police to come either. In the sweet spot between the two you walk off with headphones in your ears and pretend you saw nothing.

Because you didn't see anything. In fact, you were never there in the first place.

A spare peek down at the scene below tells him to wait four minutes before returning his gun to zero and putting it in his bag before waiting another two to leave the vicinity. It would take three minutes to get downstairs. He would walk off when all the attention is on the dead man. Approximately six to seven minutes later an ambulance would arrive and pronounce Yoshifumi Takemitsu DOA. Dead on arrival. 

Kenma lets out a breath he’s been holding since he brought his face up to the gun. He slumps further against the lip of the roof and closes his eyes once again.

Then he tries to tell his brain that he doesn’t care.  

In order to assassinate someone you have to have a sense of apathy. Granted, killing someone from afar—when you can’t see their face—is easier, but you still have to have some sort of detachment in order to pull the trigger.

Kenma’s way of looking at things runs along one philosophy and that is this: everything is considered a job. And he does not enjoy his job. There is neither a sense of justice he gets after a kill, nor a sense of revenge before one; therefore, he does not receive any sense of satisfaction either. This is what draws the line between a job and murder. Human and monster.

You could argue that it doesn’t, but it is the best Kenma is going to get.

Yoshifumi in particular happened to be a co-creator and co-CEO of a popular life insurance company in Tokyo. Not only is it well advertised but also well trusted, which, in a world where most companies rely on fine print to screw people over, is a nice change. The company is unique because of its dual owners. Per the agreement they were supposed split the company’s revenue fifty-fifty. A great idea in theory, but never in practice.

Less than a month ago Yoshifumi’s partner discovered that Yoshifumi had been taking over eighty percent of the profit made by the company to use for his own personal gain for over three years now, literally stealing billions of yen right from his pocket.

Needless to say Yoshifumi’s partner didn’t seem to like that, so he took his anger straight to Nekoma, the company where Kenma works. By having his business partner killed not only would Yoshifumi’s partner have control over one hundred percent of their previously shared revenue, but he would also collect sixty percent of Yoshifumi’s insurance money simply because they were business partners. In short, Yoshifumi Takemitsu died because of dirty money.

_Life_ _insurance company, huh?_

It’s sort of ironic in a way. Though, Kenma can’t bring himself to laugh.

The minutes pass and he finally turns back around and begins to return his gun to zero, untightening the bolts and dismantling the parts before tucking each piece back into their respective pouches in his backpack.

He is about to throw it onto his back—to get up and leave—when the unmistakable touch of a gun barrel is pressed to the back of his head, just under the crown. Kenma’s blood seems to freeze in his veins.

Through his skull he can hear as the gun clicks and the hammer settles in place. The sound is from a M9 Beretta. Ninety-nine millimeters: a standard handgun. Anyone could get their hands on a gun like that—and anyone could shoot one. It can be anyone behind him.

He swallows and tries not to let his breathing get out of control, tries not to let the panic seep into his bones.

The body behind him shifts into a crouch. Kenma feels a mouth come millimeters away from his ear.

“Gotcha,” the voice says.


	2. <input = unknown.value>

* * *

Kenma doesn’t think. Not really. His immediate response is to raise his hands in innocence. “I don’t have any money,” he says, voice toneless.

Sure this is a gun that anyone could get their hands on, but that doesn’t mean another assassin wouldn’t also use it as well, especially meaning that they are easily able to conceal it in the busy heart of the city. He doesn’t think about that. Nor does he think about the unlikeliness of a robber following him up seven stories to the rooftop of an apartment building just for some pocket money.

Usually a response like that keeps him unsuspecting and innocent, like he is just another citizen—some trash kid on the street. But with the unmistakable parts of a military-calibre sniper rifle tucked in an open backpack in his lap he is far from ordinary. There is no playing innocent anymore.

“I don’t want money,” the voice says.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to turn around.” The man yanks the collar of Kenma’s trench coat, hoisting him up like a mother carrying a cub by its scruff, and turns them both around. Then he removes the gun he is holding from the back of Kenma’s head and points it at the man standing a few meters away. With two bullets he shoots him dead.

The body falls limp to the ground and the gun he’d been holding clatters next to him. The gun that he’d been aiming at them. At Kenma.

The hand on Kenma’s collar releases him. He lands on his rear, eyes wide and panic kicking his heartbeat into overdrive. The shock puts a current down his spine as he stares at the body.

That man had been following him?

Lying just out of his reach is the gun, an AR-15 with a silencer on it. He crouches next to the man and recognizes him instantly as the man from the elevator. He must have got off at a later stop, waited for Kenma to climb the stairwell past the floor he had stopped on, and followed him. Once outside, Kenma wouldn’t even have heard him come through the metal door because of the wind.

He sifts through the pockets of the man’s suit. He’d been intent to stay on him; this man wouldn’t just be some random chump with a gun. He had come to murder Kenma. And if Kenma is right, he knows exactly why.

There’s nothing but a couple of bullet holes under his jacket and shirt. There isn’t anything in any of his pockets, not even a wallet.

He looks to the gun, taking off the silencer and scanning the barrel. He runs a thumb over the base of the handle, just under the grip, and his worst fears are answered.

There is an engraving there. It is painted red and bears the mark of a phoenix with its wings spread, one curling up and the other down to complete a circle around the bird.

Fervently, Kenma checks the base of the man’s neck, behind his ear, and his wrist, under the face of his watch. Lastly he rips off his shoe and sock to check his right anklebone.

There it is. The emblem: a tiny red tattoo of the same phoenix

He wants to be sick.

~

In the heart of Tokyo, assassination has bloomed into a growing industry, albeit an underground one.

Seven years ago, when the prospect of it was young there were only three assassins, known only by public-given aliases. Together, however, they made up the first generation of assassins to exist in Tokyo, dubbed ‘Genesis’.

Each of them owned their own chunk of Tokyo, segmented pieces of territory running ragged lines through the city, and they protected their territory like wolves, because it was paramount—it was business.

But when word got around that assassination was an extremely profitable profession, interest was piqued; it was the get rich quick scheme that everyone was looking for. It seemed that virtually anybody could become a successful assassin.

So virtually anyone did.

Within a matter of weeks the industry became bloated with amateurs looking for fast money. The three original assassins were angered by the infringement on their territory. Though having never spoken to each other before, the three of them agreed to become allies until they had eliminated the interlopers.

The first massacred assassin, one of the interlopers, could not appear on television, no matter how censored the picture was. He had been cut to ribbons and hung like an overcoat on a traffic light in an intersection near Tokyo tower.

                                                                                                                                                           He was made an example of.

After that, a silent, grotesque war broke out. Assassins pulled off killing targets and instead looked to killing each other to eliminate the competition. Strangely, for the general public it was a time of peace; a hurricane inside of itself. They watched as Tokyo turned into a red city.

Week after week the news reported about people–self-proclaimed assassins–murdered in the streets: slaughtered, gutted, and made to suffer. News stories of people who had been stabbed or shot until they became unrecognizable, robbed of their limbs and stripped of their skin.

This became ‘The Muddied Generation’.

It took two years for the war to run its course. At that point there was only a small handful of assassins left. While much of them were murdered, enough of them had been chased away, scared of losing their lives. Many of them had even been arrested for their ‘assassinations’, too inexperienced to evade the law.

Some, however, had thrived and found success during the war, and at the time of the war’s end there were eight major assassins all working in newly divided territory. These eight (which included the original three) made up the third generation of assassins—dubbed ‘The Residual’.

But transitioning back to their role as hired assassins was rough. Everyone was afraid; usual clients were scared of getting caught in another two-year crossfire between dueling killers. Business dwindled and all the assassins could do was keep tossing out their baitless line and wait for a catch.   

However, it was at this time when the role of ‘informant’ emerged from the dirt. People in black coats with more connections than skin cells. Assassins needed these connections, things that they had lost during the war, and the information brokers wanted in on the money. Pairing up seemed like the most natural solution and the result was a surprisingly symbiotic relationship between the two. Every assassin had their information pipeline, and every informant had their oil rig. All that was left was to create an empire. Pairs turned into trios, turned into entire teams made up of a flurry of assassins and information brokers.

Clans masquerading as ‘companies’ grew from there. Overtime the eight assassins settled themselves into six clans. Two of the eight had partnered up early on to form a clan together, and a few months after that another group had been torn apart when the police found them and charged them all for multiple counts of conspiracy to, aiding and abetting with, and committing first degree murder among others, eradicating the entire clan.

This is where we find ourselves today. In the middle of the fifth generation of assassins, the second wave of professionally trained assassins integrated into the business. In a Tokyo infested with six major assassin groups all vying for attention. For targets. For money.

~

Of the six groups each assassin is marked with an emblem usually in one of four spots: the base of the neck, behind the ear, on the ankle and on the top of the wrist usually hidden by the face of a watch; symbolizing what company they belong to. It is a mark of unity. And territory. It is also where they place your Tracker Chip into your skin.

Kenma’s own is the tiny silhouette of a black cat sitting upright at the nape of his neck, hidden behind his hair.

This man clearly belongs to Phoenix, one of Nekoma’s biggest rivals. But he isn’t here by accident or because he’s been called to the same job. He’s a head-hunter, which means two things: that Phoenix has found out who Kenma is,

and that they want him dead.

The assassin’s assassin.

Kenma’s stomach churns. Had it not been for the man behind him he would have been dead.

“They’ve been following you all day,” the stranger tells him. While Kenma checked the body he had come up behind him.  

“They?” Kenma asks.

“The other one is downstairs. He’ll probably come up soon when he doesn’t hear anything from his partner.”

The assassin measures him with a hard stare. This guy is trying to earn his trust, get Kenma to let his guard down. He is going to kill Kenma in the elevator.

Outside or in a stairwell Kenma has an environment to help him fight, use it for leverage, vantage, distraction or cover. But when it comes to hand-to-hand combat with an opponent, much less in a cramped space like an elevator, his experience is limited. He would be easily overpowered. He’d be dead in seconds.

“We should head down stairs,” the stranger suggests.

We? Us? He’s known this person for all of two minutes.

He offers down his hand so Kenma can take it. Then he smiles. Simple and soft.

Even an idiot can tell it’s fake—constructed. Even so, Kenma draws his hand back, surprised that he started to reach out in the first place. He lifts himself off of the concrete. “Okay,” he complies. “Lead the way.”

The man turns and makes his way towards the door.

Eyes trained on the center of the stranger’s back, Kenma reaches forward and grabs the dead Phoenix's gun, tucking it snugly in his grasp.

He draws up behind the stranger, pushes his right shoulder forward while yanking the other back, making the man loose his footing. He sweeps him down to the ground and hooks his right arm around the man’s neck in a hold. Then he touches the gun to his temple. “Don’t move,” Kenma warns. Then he lets his breath calm down before he asks, “Who do you work for?”

“I’m an alley cat,” he responds. That is the right answer—Nekoma’s answer—but Kenma doesn’t believe him one bit. No fellow assassin puts a gun to another with the same emblem. He is just baiting him.

“Show me,” Kenma orders quietly.

The stranger obeys without further prodding. “On the right. Behind my ear.”

With his thumb Kenma brushes his mess of a hairstyle out of the way.      

There it is, the tiny black cat sitting prim and staring back at him with wide eyes. It is the exact same one as Kenma’s. He moves his thumb and presses it to the middle of the tattoo. He can feel the bump there just under the skin. He’s been chipped.

“Why did you point your gun at me?”

“There was a Phoenix behind me. I had to play the part of the enemy or he’d shoot us both.”

“Who are you?”

“Kuroo Tetsurou."

That’s the wrong answer. _No_ assassin tells another their name.

He considers the tattoo again. It looks fresh, the black of it still inky as if he’d just gotten it a few days ago; the skin around it is still red and sensitive.

“And _you_ are Kozume Kenma.”

Kenma’s body quakes as a shiver traces down his spine. A tiny part of his mind hisses: _He knows your name. Kill him. Now._

He tries not to let his fear leak into his body but his shakey grip on the AR-15 tightens nonetheless. The man—Kuroo—only relaxes in Kenma’s hold. “Yaku Morisuke sent me here,” Kuroo adds slowly, deliberately.

Kenma’s reeling mind slows down. Yaku’s gone under dozens of names and aliases throughout his career. Kenma himself had only just learned his real given name less than a month ago after three years of working under the man. The fact that this stranger knows it either means that Yaku is dead or that Yaku trusts this man.

And Yaku isn’t dead.

So then why the gun at Kenma’s head if his intention was to save him?

It’s risky, but if there’s any information on which to trust this stranger it's Yaku’s name. And if it’s Chief Yaku… then he has to follow orders.

Against every instinct, Kenma removes the gun from the man’s temple and releases his grip. He steps away from the stranger, giving him room to hoist himself off the ground and straighten himself.

“I feel like we got off on the wrong foot here,” Kuroo reasons. “Let me reintroduce myself.” He puts a hand out in between them. “I’m Kuroo."

“Kenma,” he responds, too cautious to close the gap and take his hand. There’s too much he can do to it; twist it or snap it, dislocate a finger or his shoulder.

“I can see why you’re so nervous, but trust me: I’m on your side.”

He looks up at Kuroo and tries to search for something to latch onto. Before Kenma can respond, Kuroo’s wrapping his arm around the back of his head and yanking it down and against his body.

Kenma grits his teeth and curses himself. _I knew it_. He shoves the barrel of his gun into Kuroo’s stomach and is about to pull the trigger when he hears other gunshots. A pair of them. Kuroo’s just above his head, and a semi-automatic handgun from someone behind Kenma, over by the entrance of the roof.

Instantly he knows that it’s the other Phoenix.

“To the vent!” Kenma yells. The two of them dart right, towards cover, and it's hard not to notice how Kuroo runs beside him, placing himself between Kenma and the firefight. They press their backs to the metal and Kuroo twists around to return fire as the Phoenix darts behind the entrance door for cover.

“You’re bleeding,” he notices. He’s been shot in the right bicep, the one that he used to block the shot aimed at Kenma’s head.

His mind is spinning a mile a minute. Everything about this is confusing. There’s too much he doesn’t know and it’s making him panic.

_No. Not here. You have to keep a clear head if you want to make it out of this alive. Focus. Look around you. Use everything you can to your advantage._

Kenma forces his breathing to slow as he tries to take stock of the situation. They’re behind bad cover hidden behind the vent farthest from the roof’s entrance. At a clean forty-five degree angle from the door, the Phoenix’s bullets are chipping at the edge of their cover, narrowly avoiding Kuroo’s arm. With the right shot he can catch Kuroo once more, and the next time might be fatal.

“We have to move. Go to the next vent on my count,” Kenma tells him. Kuroo nods and he counts off to three before they both streak across the open space for cover.

Kuroo is still in front of him, insistent on being his shield. Kenma watches, takes this into consideration.

Behind the second farthest vent they have a bit more safety because they’re at a more acute angle, but as the Phoenix reloads with another round he knows they’re not getting out of this alive unless they fight back.

“What do we do?” Kuroo asks.

He thinks about the dead Phoenix, and this one now. The whole time their attentions had been focused on Kenma; to kill him. To them Kuroo was just in the way, and judging by how he is behaving he is intent on _staying_ in the way. Maybe…

“If it’s me he wants then we can use that to our advantage.”

“How?”

He licks his lips. “I can’t tell you. If I do, it won’t work. Just do as I say. On my count run to the next vent. I’ll follow behind you.”

“I’m not letting you use yourself as bait.”

More shots.

“I won’t.”

“How do I know that?”

“I’m not planning on dying here,” he says.

Then he counts to three.

They cross the space between the vents and the bullets follow at their heels until they’re behind the third vent. The gunshots clatter against the metal.

Now they’re on the same plane as the roof exit, no angles to worry about.    

Kenma heaves and then tightens his grip on the AR-15 still in his hand. He looks at Kuroo and says, “Again. One. Two. Three.”

Kuroo sprints. The Phoenix’s bullets follow him, expecting Kenma to be behind him. He isn’t.

The Phoenix can’t swing his gun around fast enough before Kenma stands and shoots him twice in the chest.

The air goes silent and the wind turns restless, flipping Kenma’s trench coat around his thin frame. Kuroo stands cautiously, winces at his arm when he straightens, and waits a moment to see if the Phoenix is truly dead. Then he walks over and puts two in the skull, just in case.

Kenma moves back to where his backpack is to finish packing up all of his gear. When he slugs it onto his shoulder and turns back around he finds that Kuroo’s looking at him.

He remembers Kuroo’s arm, blood inky as it starts to seep through the material of his grey windbreaker. Sirens begin to blare from the south. “We should leave.”

“Right.”

They make their way off the roof and into the elevator.

There’s a long stretch of silence before Kuroo says, “Can I ask you something?”

“Okay,” Kenma mumbles.

“How did you know he was going to keep shooting me and not you?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t. I established a pattern for him to follow, and then I broke it. He expected me to be behind you. You did too. That’s why it worked.”

Kuroo considers Kenma with appraising eyes. It’s clear that he doesn’t reek power like the others Yaku has told him about, isn’t as blatantly lethal as Yamamoto or a surging, growing, _learning_ threat like Inuoka, but his presence is warm and he gives the feeling of being the type of person you always want on your team.    

And Kuroo figures he’s got a lot of amending to do if he wants that, especially after what he’d done.   

“I _can_ say I have made better first impressions before, especially with the disastrous way this one went, saying hello to you with the barrel of my gun and all. Sorry to scare you like that. I just wanted to get between you and the Phoenix as fast as possible.”  

Kenma just makes a small, dismissive hum. 

They leave the building and Kenma tugs his collar up to hide as much of his face as he can. Beside him, Kuroo pulls the neck warmer he’s wearing up to rest just under his eyes. On a bright, chilly autumn day like this they look nothing but normal. Well, save for the huge bloodstain on Kuroo’s arm of course. They have to leave before someone notices.

Kenma pulls out his phone and opens up his contacts, a library of single letters, like a nonsensical alphabet. He selects _Y_ and presses dial. He lets it ring twice, enough for the signal to bounce off the nearest cell phone tower and give off his location, before hanging up.   

Then they go wait at a bus stop a block away.

Kai pulls up ten minutes later and they make sure to wait a minute or two before hopping into the car.

The smell of fresh leather dominates Kenma’s nose as he slides onto the seat. Kai meets his eyes in the rear-view mirror, question splayed on his face. _Are you alright?_

He nods.

As they drive off Kenma realizes that he’s forgotten something. He taps Kuroo lightly on the shoulder. “Hm?”

Kenma’s eyes skitter off to the safety of the seat between them, then to the middle console before he’s able to brazenly settle his gaze on Kuroo’s. “Thank you—for saving me.”

“I think _I_ should be the one thanking you.”


	3. if (foreign.variable() === true) {

* * *

Chief Yaku is waiting for them at the door when they arrive back at the office. When Kuroo spies him he falls back a little and lingers behind Kenma, attempting to hide the giant bloodstain on his shirt sleeve behind his head.

He isn’t fooling anyone, Yaku spots it right away. His jaw tightens. “What is that?” Kuroo scratches the back of his neck with his good arm and cringes. “You got shot, didn’t you?”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Yaku yanks his arm down a tad too rough in order to get a better look at it. “Isn’t that exactly what I told you not to do when you left HQ this morning?”

“Technically you told me to be safe,” Kuroo points out.

“It’s the same thing! I didn’t send you off this morning because I wanted a Swiss cheese sandwich.”

“No, because you’re lactose intolerant.”

“Really?” Kai asks, popping into the conversation after coming back from parking the car.

“What, he hasn’t told you yet? Even a Swiss cheese sandwich would have this place in shambles.”

There’s a blush streaked across Yaku’s face. “This isn’t funny, Kuroo.”

“You’re right, laughing gas is an anesthetic. Your gas, on the other hand, can kill a man—or two—or ten...” He sniggers.

Kai snorts out a laugh none too quietly, trying to hide the rest by turning his head away from his boss. Yaku shoots a glare his way. His face is completely red now, awash with embarrassment, “Dammit, quit joking around.”

Kuroo collapses into full-blown cackling when he suddenly finds a place for the joke to come full circle to. He can barely get the punchline out because he’s laughing so hard. “…I bet you put the _ass_ in _ass_ assin.”

Yaku snaps. “Alright, that’s it!” Kenma watches him twist Kuroo’s good arm behind his back before demanding an apology.

“Over my dead body, shrimp!” Kuroo shouts as he tries to wriggle out of it, but that only puts him in a headlock and earns him a brain-drilling noogie.

“Yeah, take that, you bed-headed weirdo!” When Kuroo cries out, Yaku tells him he won’t let up until Kuroo says uncle. There’s a shit eating grin plastered on his face.

The sniper’s jaw falls open. Even Kai’s laughter has petered to a stop, now mirroring Kenma’s incredulous stare. Kenma can’t believe his eyes. He has never seen his Chief riled up like this. Never seen someone _rile_ his Chief up like this. Sure, Yamamoto could ruffle his feathers, but that’s just because he’s an unfortunate combination of loud and obnoxious; this is different.

“Um…” Kai ventures, dazed beyond a proper thought.

Yaku stops, remembers where he is, and who is watching. His eyes meet Kenma’s for a second before he tears them away. The Chief clears his throat and straightens out his suit, mutters something about Kuroo being in a less than ideal state for him to introduce to the rest of the clan. He tells Kai to get Shibayama and ask her to grab a first-aid kit and meet them in his office before storming away.

Kenma mumbles that he needs to go to the bathroom to wash his hands, and slinks off.

In front of the sink, he pumps a mound of soap into his hand, and tries to wrap his head around what just happened. He’s scrubbing non-existent dirt out from under his nails, and he can’t get his mind off the grin on the Chief’s face.

~

Yaku’s office is a conference room converted to a sort of living room type setup, with his large desk in front of a projection screen and a pair of couches surrounding a communal coffee table in front of that. Kuroo is perched on Yaku’s desk, wincing as Shibayama wraps the disinfected wound on the outside of his arm with gauze. Yaku is sat in his desk chair, listening to Kuroo’s recount of that morning and squinting at the offending wound. Kai watches them from one of the couches as Kenma enters, placing himself on the opposite end of it.

Kai’s eyes slide toward him. “Hands all clean?”

All he gets in return is a noncommittal grunt.

By the time Kuroo is all patched up, muscles around the wound injected with lidocaine for the rest of the day so the pain is numbed, everyone else has found their place in the room and a curious hum now electrifies the air. Everyone is eager to know who the tall stranger with the wild black hair is.

Finally, Yaku steps out from behind his desk.

“I’m sure you’re all wondering who the one with the weird hair is: his name is Kuroo Tetsuro and the short and skinny of it is that he’s an ex-mole who’s come to work for us.” If Kuroo thought he was in the hot seat before, then Yaku just skipped preheating the oven, right to lighting a fire under his ass.

‘Mole’ isn’t the most flattering title to introduce someone with. Most just boil them down to dirty snitches, but for those who really know what spies are capable of, they’re a cancer; flies on the wall designed to leech information, siphoning it to their spymaster, the government, or even just the highest bidder. Moles aren’t the type of people you just _let_ walk into your life, at least not willingly.

The team studies him, sizing him up and staring him down. Before Yaku even finishes saying the word ‘mole’, Kuroo can feel how the air in the room tilts, chills. All of their stares narrow and turn positively glacial. His sense of danger begins wailing at him from the back of his mind. All of a sudden it feels like he’s been dropped into a pit of hungry wolves. Instinct alone has him pushing the ball of his foot hard against the floor, ready to spring towards the door the second one of them even moves.

“He’s part of our family now,” Yaku punctuates, like he’s telling the pack to heel. ‘Family’ seems to be the magic word, because the animosity in their gazes is slowly kneaded away, save for the one with the shaved Mohawk, who still holds a teaspoon of it in his glare. The rest of the team’s faces fall away to polite smiles.

“Well, in that case, welcome to the family, Kuroo-san,” says the one who patched him up. Shibayama, he reminds himself.

Each of them gives him their own little welcome into the family. With a wave. Or with a smile. Or a special lilt in their voice.

Kuroo blinks. Once. Twice. All of the defensive tension locked in his body evaporates.

It occurs to him that this is the warmest welcome that Kuroo Tetsuro has gotten in years.

“Thank you—for having me.”

Yaku turns to Kuroo. “And now, to introduce the team.” He tosses a thumb over his shoulder towards the man who drove he and Kenma to the office. “This is my right hand man, Kai, who, it seems, has already taken a liking to you.”

The man throws out a casual two-fingered salute.

Then he indicates the two leaning on the arm of the opposite couch. “Over there is Inouka, and beside him is Shibayama.” Inouka gives off an overwhelming ‘good guy’ vibe, like he’s the main character in a superhero movie and the narrator just hasn’t told him yet. Shibayama is very easily the shortest of the group, and has large, honest eyes and a kind face. Very bubbly for an assassin, Kuroo notes.

“They are two halves of a whole ‘serial killer’ called The Slasher, or so the streets like to call them. And two halves of a whole—in general: they’re thinking of a spring wedding.”

Inouka blushes to high heavens. “Geez, Chief, you don’t have to go _that_ far!”

“ _If_ he ever proposes to her,” Kai adds.

Shibayama shakes her head at Kuroo. “We’re just dating,” she clarifies.  

Yaku continues going down the list. “That one is Fukunaga, our resident hacker, who spends his spare time being the online equivalent of a graffiti artist.” The boy sniggers. “And no, he will never tell you what he’s laughing at, but good luck trying to guess. The geezer who just slipped in the door thinking nobody would notice that he’s late is Nekomata-sensei, vice-president of Nekoma, and the head of our collection of information brokers—who you’ll never meet. They do other things on the side, but for the most part, we scratch their back and they scratch ours.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Mole,” the old man says with a curt nod.

“The one glaring daggers at you for no reason is Yamamoto, who isn’t as intimidating as he likes to think he is.”

“Oi!”

“He is otherwise known as Atlas, a nickname oh-so generously given to him by the Tokyo police department—”

“I said I was sorry.”

“—And of course you know Kenma: The Phantom Sniper.”

Kenma’s eyes skitter away.

Kuroo bobs his head in tiny nods, letting himself take the rag-tag group in. “What a cute lineup you’ve got here, Yaku,” he says finally.

“Thank you,” Inouka chirps.

“Hah!” Yaku cackles over him, crossing his arms. “You won’t be singing the same tune when you see how _lethal_ the Nekoma group is.”

Yaku’s not even bragging, at least not in the hyperbolic sense of the word. Their power lies dormant for now—he can sense it, thrumming just under the surface, disciplined—but it’s easy to tell: they really are lethal.

Their only purpose in life is to _be_ lethal. Be the kind of thing that can tear and cleave with practised precision, that can control a battle by meticulously dismantling their opponent. That can erode you. Gut you. Erase you.

He gets to see what they’re capable of first hand.

“I guess I won’t be,” he agrees.

“You’ll get to know them better once you settle in. In fact, starting tomorrow I’m going to get you to start training with them. Yamamoto and Fukunaga, I want you here by seven tomorrow morning to introduce you to a new job. Everyone else is to be in the gym in training clothes by nine am. You can all go home.”

The team rises and moves to the door, each of them bidding Kuroo their own personal goodbye. Kenma stays where he is.

Yamamoto does too. He frowns. “Wait, that’s it?”

“I told you I was only calling you in for a short meeting. Were you expecting something else?” The Chief asks.

Yamamoto opens his mouth. He looks like he wants to argue, but also like he doesn’t know what to argue about. With a final look at Kuroo, then Kenma, the heat dies on his tongue as he joins the rest.

At a nod from his boss, Kai closes the door behind them. Yaku finally turns his attention to Kenma. The sniper is staring at him. “I can tell by the look on your face that you want a better explanation. Well here it is: He’s an ex-spy turned assassin, and he’s here to protect you.”

“But why?”

“I’m sure you figured this out already. I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want you to worry, but; Nekomata and the rest of the informants tell me that multiple individuals have you marked. They’re looking for you.”

“Phoenix?”

Yaku shakes his head. “More than just Phoenix.”

Kenma isn’t an assassin because he is a good shot. He is an assassin because he is invisible. No one would remember a voiceless recluse who looked like they were still in high school, and no one would pay attention to such a person walking away from the general vicinity of a crime scene. That’s why he’s perfect.

But now he is no longer faceless.

Except, it isn’t the police who have found him; it’s another assassin.

Yaku continues, “They want you dead, Kenma. I’m not willing to risk losing you. This,” he gestures to Kuroo, "is for your own good.”

Kenma turns his eyes to the spy. This whole situation seems off. Kuroo’s arrival was sloppy–but it’s not his fault. “Why did you send him after me while I was doing a job? You could have done it before, or waited until after I came back—if…” Things start to make more sense as he tests his thoughts out on his tongue, “...if you knew this was going to happen. But you didn’t know, did you? And that’s why you sent him without telling me. Because you didn’t know yourself that Phoenix was going to make a move until the last minute.”

Yaku licks his lips. “No sense in lying when you’ve hit the nail on the head. Nekomata-sensei gave me the notice that you were being followed about an hour after you left the office this morning. I was going to introduce Kuroo to you in two days after he finished basic level weapons training.”

“How long have you known I’ve been marked?”

“Intel informed me about it six days ago.”

“ _Why_ have I been marked?”

Yaku takes a slow breath in through his nose. His face grows steely, gaze closing off. “I’m not at liberty to give you that information as it might put your life at risk. I think it’s fair to say that you’re the first assassin to ever have their own assassin. We’re the hunters, and now the tables have turned. Our first step is damage control.” The Chief tilts his head towards Kuroo. “This is the damage control… and also your bodyguard. I want you to stick to your daily routine. You will still be doing jobs, but stay alert. Kuroo will go home with you, and on jobs he’ll work as your partner, got it?”

Kenma ducks his head in a nod. Truth be told, he hasn’t quite sorted out how he feels about all this, but it’s not as if he’s going to argue.

“I almost forgot,” Yaku adds. He places a box of hair dye on his desk. Kenma picks it up. Jet black. “You’re to dye your hair tonight. You killed the two who saw you up close today. Nobody else has ever seen your face. They don’t know what they’re looking for, so don’t give them anything _to_ look for.”

Dying his hair is going to be troublesome, and messy. He isn’t looking forward to it. “Yes sir.”

“Any questions?”

“Why an ex-spy? Why not Kai or someone else from Nekoma?”

“Kuroo spent his whole career without a weapon on him. His only protection was how well he was able to watch and react to the things around him. Spies know their surroundings better than any assassin would, because that’s their only means of survival. Besides, they can’t sit around babysitting you all day, they have jobs to do too.”

As good as Kenma is at reading other people, he doesn’t seem to realize that he gives off rather clear signals of his own. Yaku knows exactly what he’s thinking as he sucks his cheek in between his teeth and begins to chew. Kuroo watches as the Chief stands and plops himself down on the couch next to his sniper, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, he may not look it, and the fact that he’s an _ex_ -mole doesn’t help too much either, but he is one of the most reliable men I know. He will have your back, no matter what. So don’t be afraid to trust him, okay?”

It’s fair to say that Yaku is like a father to Kenma—to a lot of the Nekoma bunch. This is the man who gave him everything when he had nothing, who offered him a place to belong when the rest of the world had decided that it didn’t want him. This is the man he would follow into hell. If Yaku says it’s okay, then it’s okay. Kenma nods.

“Good. Now go home and relax for a while.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kuroo holds the door open with his good arm as Kenma ducks out of the Chief’s office. He’s about to follow the sniper when he hears Yaku add, “Oh, and Kuroo.” The spy lets the door fall closed. “I’m glad you’re safe… it’s nice seeing you again.”

He grins. “Hey, that’s my line.”

Yaku rolls his eyes, a tiny smirk still left on his face.

~

The walk to Kenma’s apartment is quiet.

Without all the action and adrenaline to distract them, it now becomes painfully obvious that Yaku has dumped them into a very awkward situation. Kenma keeps to his side of the sidewalk and lets his hair curtain most of his vision. Kuroo, standing tall to Kenma’s slouched, watches him and can’t help but feel bad for him. He’s come in and destroyed this person’s precious equilibrium with bare bones explanation as to why.

Once they get to his apartment Kuroo wiggles his arm, testing it. The skin is still dense and the bicep muscles still feel like dead weight on his body. “I can help you dye your hair if you want,” he suggests as he toes off his shoes.

Kenma doesn’t really answer, but he doesn’t _not_ answer so Kuroo grabs the box of dye from the table and pads over to the kitchen counter. Kenma comes in a moment later with a towel, figuring that accepting his help would make this less difficult. 

They start with washing his hair because that’s what the box told them to do. Kuroo runs his fingers through Kenma’s hair, making sure it is entirely wet.

It’s weird. The last time he had someone so close to his head was when his mother thought he had lice in the fourth grade, but it only turned out to be dandruff. His brain has changed since then. Now, as an assassin, every touch is a threat. Every reach is one meant to end your life.

_He could strangle me right now if he wanted to, snap my neck, or force my face under the water until I can’t breathe anymore, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything to save myself._

Kuroo simply gets to work washing, whistling as he does.

The sniper waits a long time for something to happen, because, surely, something _will_ happen. He knows it will. And so he waits, tension coiled in his bones. He busies himself by scooping up piles of bubbles that have fallen to the bottom of the sink and scrubbing his hands with them, trying to whittle away his nerves. 

Fingers begin working the soap into his scalp.

And nothing happens.

His ears get soapy.

And nothing happens.

Kuroo hits the faucet with his elbow and the water turns freezing for a moment before he restores it to the right temperature.

But other than that, nothing happens.

And when something has still yet to happen. Kenma wonders if it will at all.

It’s gradual, but amidst the smell of fruity shampoo and then the rank of hair dye, Kenma begins to relax.

The process is relatively quiet until Kuroo tips Kenma’s now completely black locks under the faucet to rinse the excess dye off his head, then his neck, when Kenma sputters, squirming away from the faucet’s spray. Kuroo is quick to flinch his hands away. “Crap, did I get it in your eye?”

“No.” Another giggle slips past.

Kuroo’s eyes narrow. “Are you… ticklish?”

“I’m not ticklish.”

“It sounds like you might be.”  

“I’m not.” 

“You are.”  

“I’m _not_.” 

This time Kuroo purposefully tips his neck directly under the faucet, and Kenma coughs and hacks and laughs as he tries to worm away from the warm water. “You are,” Kuroo says, point proven, as he lets him go.

“I’m sorry,” Kenma manages, despite his waterlogged coughing fit.

“Why are you apologizing?”

He grabs the towel off the counter, shoving his face into it. “This is so weird. Something so deadly shouldn’t be… _ticklish_.”

“Well…why not?”

Kenma looks at Kuroo like he’s just told him that goats could fly if they tried hard enough. “It doesn’t match,” he says. “It’s like… if you saw a rabbit carry a shotgun.” 

“Why would a rabbit carry a shotgun?”  

“I mean metaphorically, if a rabbit could hold a shotgun, it wouldn’t feel right, right?”

Kuroo mulls on this for a second. “I guess so. Humans aren’t very smart creatures, and our brains have to simplify things so we can understand them. We associate the rabbit with being cute, and that’s it. So when it does something not-cute it feels weird because cute is the only thing a rabbit _can_ be, y’know? We don’t give them room to be anything else. But they’re more than that.”

Kenma stares at Kuroo like he’s just thrown open a window he didn’t even know was there. He can’t tell if the breeze is refreshing or unwelcome.

~ 

Later he is curled up in a ball, hair wrapped up in a towel, and tapping on his PSP. After ridding the sink of all the black dye, Kuroo spends the rest of the afternoon looking a little lost. There’s only so many times you can rearrange everything in a stranger’s fridge before it starts feeling invasive, and boring. And Kenma may seem preoccupied with his game but there is a niggling feeling that there’s a complete stranger in his house and he hasn’t even really bothered to give him a tour of his apartment, or even a decent welcome. It’s unavoidable how painfully awkward the situation is, like a gaping black hole in the living room floor. Acknowledging the hole only makes things more awkward, but the longer they let it sit there the more it’ll swallow up.  

After racking his brain, the only thing Kuroo can really come up with is middle school icebreakers. It’s a little juvenile, but it’s worth a shot. So he finally leaves the kitchen and plants himself on the other side of Kenma’s couch.

“Let’s play twenty questions. You go first.”

Kenma doesn’t even take his eyes off the screen. “Do I have to play this game?”

“That one doesn’t count.”

“It was a question, wasn’t it?”

He opens his mouth, pauses, and then closes it. “Touche,” he concedes. “Listen, it’s going to be weird living here without actually knowing you,” he says instead.

“Chief Yaku probably made a profile for you. You probably know all about me.”

True, on both accounts. Kuroo knew Kenma like a doctor knows a patient: clinically. But things like ‘Hey did you know that your blood type is A?’ aren’t very fun conversation starters.

“I don’t know what your favourite food is.”

“Pie.”

“What kind?”

“Apple.”

“See, now I know.” Kenma doesn’t see how knowing what kind of pie someone likes is vital information one could use to save their life. He doesn’t hesitate to tell Kuroo this.

“I want to know you better. I want to be friends. Is that so bad?”

Admittedly, friends wasn’t something Kenma had considered. Kuroo was a tool offered to him. An extra set of eyes and ears. Maybe he doesn’t have to be just that?

No.

Friends are baggage.

**Friends are hostage material.**

**Friends will _hate_ _you_ when they find out how you bloody your hands for a living.   **

A flash of bright orange hair slips into his mind. He tries to push the memory down as fast as he can but it bubbles to the surface before he can control it.

~

Kenma hadn’t thought about Hinata Shouyou in years. He forced himself to forget the little piece of the sun that fell to earth and moved in next to him when he was six years old, that insisted that Kenma come out of his room to play, and that they be best friends over a pinkie promise agreement and a grin.

Their childhood was popsicles in the shade with their toes in the grass. It was giggling in the dark during sleepless sleepovers, and Shouyou looking over Kenma’s shoulder and asking endless questions about his games.

Usually someone like Shouyou would overwhelm him, but Shouyou was so unabashedly himself that Kenma found himself getting swept up in the fun. In fact, they were so busy having fun that he forgot to give his anxieties any attention, and, without it, they withered, like poorly attended plants. 

Shouyou was special to him. He was someone who made Kenma happy. He gave him everything Kenma’s parents never bothered to.

After high school, Shouyou had been scouted for volleyball and entered one of the top athletic schools in Japan on a sports scholarship. Kenma, on the other hand, wasn’t particularly good at anything, at least, not good enough to pursue anything specific in college. He had decided to bypass university and find work.

With work, he found anxiety once again, something that Shouyou had nearly erased during their childhood. Shouyou wasn’t there for him anymore. He’d moved to Kyoto to live on campus, a two-hour train ride away. He had offered encouragement, but that was only over text and video chat. He didn’t have Shouyou’s warmth anymore.

Soon, Kenma found himself in a routine of finding a job after three months of skipping breakfast and lunch only to have it be cut short because of a job-ending anxiety attack, each bigger and more grotesque than the last.

Being in between jobs meant he had a lot of time to waste. He filled that time with gaming, that is, until he ran out of games to play—games that he could _afford_ to play. It left him without much else to do until one day he remembered one of the projects from his programming class in high school. The task was to program an elevator to move up and down. He remember the project being a challenge, but it wasn’t a chore. It was actually pretty fun.

He tried replicating the project, even downloaded the same coding program he used back then, but without a workbook at his side like he had in high school he found that he quickly ran into problems. So, he searched message boards online for information on how to fix the problem.

Instead of the solution to his elevator problem, he found himself on a message board full of hackers.

He’d fallen down the rabbit hole and stumbled upon Wonderland.

Kenma was a lurker for a long while, scrolling through the site, but never commenting. Watching and learning. He would come home from his job, on a bad day fired and on a good day inches away from _being_ fired, and pull up the forum. Soon after that, the rest of the world—all his problems, everything—would melt away. He gradually taught himself C++ to keep up with the hackers and he ditched his elevator in favour of challenges that the site’s host NekoKat5732 had posted online as a weekly contest. The puzzles (what the hackers called Breaches) were simple: crack the code and hack into the system to get to the other side.

Week by week he watched these people mull over the Breaches; joking and complaining about them. Despite never commenting, he started to feel like he really knew these people. He shared their victories, their frustration, their anticipation for new puzzles, and slowly but surely Kenma was beginning to feel like he belonged somewhere again. It felt nice.

And his anxiety faded into a lull.

~

The first time he tried a Breach he downloaded the file, but had no clue what to do to crack it. He didn’t touch it after that, just let it sit on his desktop as he kept a close eye on the forum, waiting for someone to crack it. A week later he logged on to find that someone named KingOfKings had broken in.

_pics or it didn’t happen_  someone commented underneath him.

When he scrolled down he saw a screenshot of a congratulations screen, a tiny, pink-haired anime girl pumping her fist in the air next to the phrase ‘Congratulations, you hacked into the system!”

Under that:

_woah! :O_

_how did you do it?_

_it’s a lie, he’s a troll. he probably made it in m.s paint._

_^^roflmao_

_^^ur the only one who's a troll, troll_

_I couldn’t get past the first few lines._

_how did you get that_

_you got in??? Waht?!??_

_tell us how you did it_

Really, all of that should have been his first clue. But the curtain was ripped away completely when KingOfKings posted the code he used to crack the system. He said he got it from a friend of a friend of a friend’s cousin who was a computer programmer.

Oh…Now he understood.

He remembered one night that he was on the forum when the site blacked out for a moment, and when it came back, the entire thing had been graffitied with jeers of _Skiddies! Skiddies! Skiddie trash!_ After that, NekoKat5732 shut it down for the evening for cleanup. _This_ is what that was about. Those were the real hackers.

       **Skid** · **die** | {/Sˈkidē/} | _noun_

       An unskilled individual who uses scripts or programs developed by others to attack computer systems and networks and deface websites.           This term is often used as an insult.

Child’s play. All of it.

But it wasn’t like Kenma could do any better.

Being a Skiddie was all he had left, and he wasn’t even really that, so who was he to say what was child’s play and what wasn’t?

The next day, he picked up a book on computer programming and scripting from the library.

~

Life went on like that for a long while, until one day user NekoKat5732 posted a Breach that seemed to stump everyone. They banded together and scoured their archives and when they had exhausted that, they begged NekoKat for clues or to switch out the Breach for a different one. NekoKat refused. The group’s obsessive determination was eventually snuffed out when boredom set in. The Breach was deemed impossible.

Meanwhile, Kenma was only just beginning to understand the nature of the puzzle. He found that it was most helpful if he looked at it like he was untying a huge bundle of wires, knot by tiny knot, picking through each snarl, stringing it back through the rest and then moving on to the next. He collected tiny solutions and compiled it into one solid code.

It was a Thursday when he finally coaxed the final knot open. He plugged in the code and ran a final test. To his complete surprise, it ran smoothly after working out only a handful of kinks.

A glance at the clock reminded him that he should have left for work five minutes ago. 

_Just one try_ , he told himself. So he plugged his code into the Breach and was completely caught off guard when a ‘ding ding ding’ blasted through his headphones. Another anime girl—a blue-haired one this time—hopped up and down, cheering him on.

He’d done it.

He’d actually

done it.

This was his moment! He could sweep in like a superhero and show everyone on the forum that he’d found the solution to The Impossible One and they’d _have_ to let him be a part of their group. They’d have to.

He would _finally_ be able to talk to these people, instead of watching them talk through the other side of a two-way mirror. Kenma’s fingers flew over the keys as he quickly made an account under the alias Echo51 and made a reply post to the Breach and copy pasted his code before posting.

He shut his laptop, grabbed his work smock and took off.

Only to be fired once he got there. Tail between his legs, he dragged himself home. At his doorstep: an eviction notice.

He took the envelope inside, whipped it somewhere across the room. Apartment? Job? Money? To hell with it, none of it mattered now. He just had to get back on the site. That’s what mattered.

Validation.

Kenma shucked his jacket and then planted himself on his desk chair. While he’d been gone, the forum had exploded, most of the hackers demanding to know who this newbie was, where they’d come from, how they had solved The Impossible One.

User BonfireSoup, the site’s Gate Keeper, demanded proof just like always and Kenma quickly posted his screenshot. It took less than five minutes for NekoKat5732 to confirm that his solution was correct. His stomach fluttered and he spun an excited circle in his desk chair. 

The chat went wild.

_Waht!? That’s crazy! (ﾟДﾟ?)_

_You got it??_

_Congratulations~~ (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧_

_but that Breach was impossible!_

_who is this guy?_

_^^Yeah. I’ve never seem them before._

_^^seen*_

_^^Where’d they come from?_

_Who are you, guy?_

Kenma replied saying that he’d been a long time lurker, first time commenter.

_Well hey Echo, Congrats!_

Then he was asked how he arrived at the solution. He answered honestly, and said he’d coded it himself. Then he added: _I was pretty proud of myself actually. Why don’t I teach you guys?_

What he expected was praise. Instead, he met the firing squad.

_Who tf is this guy?_

_^^yeah, think you’re all high and mighty?_

No, wait.

_What? You get bored of shitting on other people and come here to brag? Fuck u_

I didn’t mean it like that.

_Teach us? Fuck you._

I wasn’t bragging, I just wanted to fit in with you guys.

_piece of shit!_

_☉▵☉凸_

_Lol kill yourself._

_^^he’s got nothing else better to do_

_who does this piece of garbage think he is???_

I just wanted to be friends.

_you think you’re better than us? huh? you’re not. you are nothing._

_You have been blocked by the owner of this site._

Kenma pushed away from the computer screen as if putting any sort of physical distance between him and it would lessen the blow. He speared his fingers through his hair, yanking at it, and then pounding a fist against his forehead. _I knew it, I knew I should have lied_. Now even the forum, flimsy and pathetic as it was, had shucked him.

Kenma sat in the dark, as far away from his computer as he could get for the rest of the night. He didn’t have the energy left to be mad or sad, he just felt empty. He’d been lonely and hopeless and scared like this before—after graduation when everybody else went on to study and he left with no plan at all, when Shouyou finally decided he was done with him—but there was something new this time around. He felt like he was drowning.

_you are nothing_ , his brain kept parroting to him.

 

you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing   you are nothing 

 

Yeah, he was.

~

A knock at door dragged him up from sleep the next morning. He was sure that it was his landlord finally come to demand that he forfeit his apartment. Instead of his stocky landlord though, Kenma looked through the peephole and found a short man with a gentle face and light hair. He opened the door a fraction. 

“Yes?”

“Are you Echo51?” The man asked. His blood froze, his muscles stuttered. _They found me already?_

“No. I’m not.”

“Echo51 posted on the forum from this address last night. I checked, only one person lives here.”

Brain alight with panic, Kenma ducked back into his apartment and swung the door closed. The man’s hand grabbed the edge with ease, pushing it back open with only one arm. He sobbed, “P-please don’t hurt me. I didn’t mean to offend anyone. We can forget all about it, just please don’t hurt me.”

“Hey, hey—I’m not going to hurt you,” the man assured him. “I promise. Actually, I have an offer for you. Can I come in?”

Yaku gave him a proposition—a place to work—an opportunity to become a hacker for his company. It was a solitary job that played towards his strengths, where he didn’t have to speak to people and he could go at his own pace. The job worked around his anxiety. It was perfect, so Kenma took the job.  

Immediately after that he was introduced to a man known simply as Nekomata. The old man took one look at Kenma, gave an amused chuckle and announced that he was a Skiddie. Kenma bristled.

“So you can teach him?” Yaku had asked.

“I can teach him to teach himself.”

“Meaning?”

The geezer grinned. “I’ll take him under my wing.” Then he turned to Kenma. “Nice to meet you Echo51, I’m NekoKat5732.”

~

One thing had led to another had led to another and a little less than a year later he found himself upgraded from hacker to assassin. The job wasn’t too different; in fact, a large requirement of the job was not interacting with anybody. Kenma fit that bill easily.

The only difference was that he had larger secrets to keep, secrets that left him with bloody hands and a conscience like a swamp. He was afraid of what Shouyou would think of him if he ever found out who he was and the things he’d done. Why would Shouyou ever want to be friends with someone like that?

As much as he hated the thought of it, Kenma figured his best option was to string out even more distance between him and his friend. Shouyou would get bored of their lukewarm friendship, and forget and move on. It churned his stomach but he knew it was probably for the best.

Enter Shouyou, telling him he’s moving in.

He’d used the spare key that Kenma had given him, showed up at his apartment before he got home from work and sat snacking in front of the television until he got back.

The second he saw Hinata his first thought was: _he’s seen everything, he knows. He’s going to hate me, he’s going to think I’m horrible and disgusting and terrible_ **_and_** _revolting **and** twistedloathsome **and** repulsive|reprehensible **and** execrable **~~and~~ andand** damnable|Repugnant-heinous **and** evil **A ND** sicke **and** ning **A ~~ND~~ and** abhorrent, **a nd ADN ~~aNd~~ a dn a ** Appal **ND** ling, **aND nAN ~~D~~ NaNDnA ~~NdNA~~ DNda**_ **_And a Nd ~~D na~~ AnDna_** **_DNd n A dnaand—_**

“Kenma!” He bounced off the couch (because that’s what Shouyou does: he bounces). Limbs spread like a star, smile positively glowing, he shouted, “I missed you so much!”

With a gust of wind as Kenma’s only warning, Shouyou was suddenly in front of him, rushing in for a hug. At the last second he retracted his arms. “Ah, I almost forgot. Can I hug you?”

Kenma robotically nodded his head and Shouyou wrapped his arms around him tightly.

He didn’t know. He hadn’t seen. He had come in, grabbed a snack from the fridge and then sat down on the couch to watch TV.

He had no idea and yet there he was, sitting on Kenma’s couch, when all of his equipment—guns, knives, poisons, and bombs—was _in the other room_. 

Hinata started prattling on about how he asked his coaches and professors to switch around his training and class schedules. “You know what that means right? I can start living with you like I promised back in high school! Isn’t that exciting? We don’t have to go weeks and weeks without talking anymore. Now that I live here we can talk all the time! Oh! That bag looks heavy. Let me take it.”

“No.”

“Aw, come on. With all the training I’ve done I can probably carry it with one hand. Just let me take it and I can carry it back to your office for you.”

“ _No!_ ” Kenma shouted as he finally wrestled it away from Hinata’s grasp.

“Oh…” Shouyou pulled back, surprised. He let the subject go, thinking that maybe it’s just one of his off days. “Okay. Hey, I hear there’s a volleyball game on tonight. Do you want to watch that? I’ll get your laptop from your room and we can connect it to the TV and watch it on the big screen.”

“NO!”

There was a hailstorm in his stomach. A tornado in his bones. And guns, knives, poisons, and bombs _in the other room_.

Do whatever it takes, just Get. Him. Out. Of. Here.

“Shouyou, you need to leave.”

“What? But I just got here.”

Shouyou grabbed his hand but Kenma brushed him off. “I don’t care. Go.”

He tried to reach out again, looking for a piece of Kenma; a shoulder, an arm, something. “Kenma, I want to see you.”

“I don’t want to see _you_ ,” Kenma snapped, snatching back his arm and turning his hunched back to Shouyou.

~~_No_ ~~

_~~Stop it~~ _

“You’ve been acting so weird lately, please talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t need you.”

~~_Stop_ ~~

_~~You don’t mean that~~ _

“Kenma, come on, we’re best friends.”

_~~You’re hurting him~~ _

“We aren’t friends,” he seethed through caged teeth.

“What? Why not? What are you saying?”

_~~He’s the only thing you have~~ _

Shouyou wasn’t leaving, he was getting closer, prying harder. At this rate he’ll find out. At this rate he’ll see what I really am. At this rate he’ll hate me. At this rate—at this rate—at this rate—

 

**Get rid of him _Now_.**

Kenma did the only thing he could think to do.

_~~Don’t do this~~ _

He spun on Shouyou

_~~DON’T~~ _

                                 and shouted, “Don’t you get it? I liked it when we wouldn’t talk for months because I don’t want you around anymore. You’re loud and obnoxious and annoying! I’ve been trying to get rid of you since we were kids, and when you went off to University I finally got what I wanted. I don’t want you back. I hate you, and I never want to see you again!”

“But—”

“Leave Shouyou! Now!”

A flash of hurt streaks across his face before he barks, “Fine! If you don’t want me, I’ll leave!”

And Shouyou walked away, walked out of Kenma’s life.

He waited two minutes after the door slammed shut, just long enough to ensure that if he cried Shouyou wouldn’t hear him. Because that’s what he did, he cried. And he didn’t stop, not for a long time.

How do you fill a hole where the sun once was?

~

Thing is: Kuroo is already a part of his world, and they both know what it feels like to be scum. Maybe he doesn’t have to keep secrets or worry about Kuroo being disgusted by him.

A spy who’s broken every trust he’s built, even with the very [redacted] he used to [redacted] for. All [redacted] of them. No, a person like that has no right to be disgusted by anyone.

He pauses his game and puts it down. “Okay, I’ll play,” he says.

The game eases tension. They get to know each other’s favourite colours, childhood pet names, how each takes their coffee.  Insignificant things, normal things.

Amongst comparing childhood Halloween costumes and old family recipes Kenma gradually lets his guard down.

Kuroo uses his last question to request to watch a movie. “You choose the movie; I’ll make popcorn?” He offers.

“How’d you know I have popcorn in my kitchen?”

“I spent a lot of time breaking the ice with your kitchen wares before I did with you.”

“Ah, sorry.”

“No worries, your toaster kept me company. So, popcorn?”

A smile. “Okay.”

Minutes later Kuroo came back with a bowl of fresh popcorn, a handful of it prematurely shoved into his mouth even before he passed the threshold of the kitchen. He swallows around it as he plunks himself down on the couch. The flinch is automatic.

“The anesthetic wearing off?” Kenma asks.

“I guess so...” Kuroo’s train of thought derails when he hears the opening music swell. “No way, is this Wall-E? I haven’t seen this movie in so long.”

“I don’t own many movies,” the sniper admits. “Watching people kill other people isn’t very appealing when you do it for a living, and that seems to be the only thing people seem to want to produce.”

“ _You_ are a very big hypocrite,” Kuroo decides.

Kenma flickers him a look. “What do you mean?”

“You do a lot of killing for such a pacifist.”

Kenma winces.

~~There it is~~

The words sting like a pin shoved under his fingernail. He swallows and nails rake down his throat. Something like acid broils in his gut.

~~This is what you were afraid of~~

Kenma must be shaking or something, because Kuroo is quick to apologize. “Kenma, hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Forget I said it. Let’s just watch the movie. Okay?”

He doesn’t press further than that, instead letting the sound of the movie fill the air for them. But Kenma hasn’t let what Kuroo said out of his mind as quickly. Even halfway through the movie it’s still bothering him.

Wall-E and Eva are floating around in space with nothing but a fire extinguisher when he suddenly says, “I am not proud of what I do.” Kuroo looks at him, surprised that he’s still hung up on it.

Looking at his socked feet Kenma adds, “I just wanted you to know that.”     

“Of course not. Anyone could see that. If you were proud of what you do you’d be a murderer, not an assassin.”

Kenma lifts his head and stares.

~

Fukunaga texts him during dinner. _“I’ve overwritten the apartment’s security camera footage.”_

Kenma messages him back a simple thank you.

He does not ask about the bodies, doesn’t need to. He knows they’ve been properly and thoroughly disposed of, knows Yaku wouldn’t stand for anything less, especially if it might be a risk to their cover.

Now he and Kuroo were never there. No physical evidence is left to place them at the scene of the crime. No jury can prove either of them guilty in a court of law.

After dinner he washes his hands thoroughly and pads into his office to delete everything related to Yoshifumi off of his phone and the hard drive of his computer. He’s envious that the computer has the privilege of having a memory bank that can be wiped clean. Emptying files from the trash can is simple. Forgetting isn’t that easy.

_Are you sure you want to delete all 782 items?_

_[Yes]        [No]_

He clicks yes.

_Your trash can has been emptied._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come and scream at me on tumblr
> 
>  
> 
> Also, special thanks to my beta Dave and my improv beta Aaron!


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